Thanks gents.
Attention today was on the drop tank and exhausts. I missed taking pics of a few steps on the tank to show you but I essentially painted the tank 76, glossed it, chipped it with a blade and drilled out the support band where it parts from the tank proper and continues to the winch. This kit came with the later metal tank which is more rarely seen on 109's. Despite having plenty of spares for the more common type, I decided to use this one anyway and leave the spares for other projects. Two pipes were also drilled in as you can see in the below pic.
Here you can see the drilled out band which I had to leave thick as it is a structural support for the tank. I also added a PE filler cap and, though it's still inaccurate, looks better that the shallow blob that was provided on the part.
Remember when I said I didn't like the struts on the rack? Well, I hacked them down a bit and added the much thinner and more realistic looking bits of stretched sprue after I had hung the tank and glued it in place. No more shudders.
Again, no pics of the steps taken to complete the exhaust stub installation but here are two pics of the finished assemblies. I ended up suing the resin set which have the ends hollowed out. For the bent shroud on the port side (first pic below) I used the kit part but thinned it significantly with my square jewellers file. I considered using some brass sheet but didn't have a good way to cut the curved notch and bend it.
On the other side, you can see the stubs better of course and here I replaced the kit shield with a new one cut from plastic card. The stubs ended up a bit too sticky-outy in the back, something I didn't notice until I installed the shield but it's not that bad when not staring at it at a macro level.
As you can see, I began the chipping process as well and for this I simply used a silver pencil at the points that saw the most wear. Left to do is the exhaust staining, some mud splatter, the D/F loop, pitot tube, and antenna wire so this one should be wrapped up soon.
Thanks again for stopping by.